Which came first, Microsoft or Netflix?
Which came first, Microsoft or Netflix?
Microsoft
1975 — 22 years before Netflix
Microsoft came first, by 22 years. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.
Side by side
| Microsoft | Netflix | |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1975 | 1997 |
| Date | 1975-04-04 | 1997-08-29 |
| Category | company | technology |
| What happened | Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque. | Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company. |
Microsoft
Microsoft was founded in April 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 — a product they had demonstrated before writing all of it. It predates Apple by almost exactly one year. The hyphen was dropped in 1976 and the company moved to Washington state in 1979.
Netflix
Netflix was founded in August 1997, a year before Google, and posted DVDs for a decade before streaming launched in January 2007. The famous origin story — Hastings founding it after a $40 late fee on Apollo 13 — has been called a useful myth by co-founder Marc Randolph. Blockbuster declined to buy the company for $50 million in 2000.
Common questions
- Which came first, Microsoft or Netflix?
- Microsoft, by 22 years — 1975 against 1997.
- When did Microsoft start?
- 1975. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.
- When did Netflix start?
- 1997. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.
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Sources
- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)